Thursday, March 22, 2007

First, you should know I fear Rudy Giuliani as a power-hungry thug who combines John McCain’s messianic personality with a ready willingness to break arms in order to further his vision and his ambition.

My most vivid memory of him is not as the hero of 9/11, but as the megalomaniacal prosecutor frog-marching handcuffed but innocent CEOs and investment bankers through their offices, building his press persona at the cost of their freedom and their reputations. Granted, there is a time and a place for a General Patton, for a take-charge approach that bends the boundaries, but such a person should always be under the control or supervision of others more powerful than he.

Now comes Professor John R. Lott, Jr., writing Law and Order and Guns in National Review Online, to confirm my thought in The Canary in the Mine, below, that Rudy Giuliani doesn’t trust the very citizenry whose votes he seeks.Lott observes that

Giuliani is hardly a “strict constructionist” on constitutional matters, at least when it comes to the Second Amendment. It is a long ways from “shall not be infringed” to “shall infringe whenever Congress has a ‘reasonable and sensible’ justification.”

…Giuliani has rarely met a gun regulation he didn’t see as ‘reasonable and sensible.’

His Honor confuses his causes and effects. More from Lott:

His support for all these gun laws isn’t too surprising given his belief that “the single biggest connection between violent crime and an increase in violent crime is the presence of guns in your society . . . the more guns you take out of society, the more you are going to reduce murder. The less guns you take out of society, the more it is going to go up.

Giuliani credits gun control with the fall in New York’s crime rate in the early 1990’s. Lott more properly credits the 30,000 additional police officers.

Even more broadly,

Giuliani’s rationalizing of New York City’s suit against the gun makers also tells something about his views. In justifying the lawsuit, Giuliani claimed that the gun makers were “deliberately manufacturing many more firearms than can be bought for legitimate purposes of hunting and law enforcement.” He refused to acknowledge any other legitimate uses for guns, including civilians using guns for self-defense.

Any politician who doesn’t recognize the limits of law while using force, whether against wealthy executives or the man on the street seeking to protect himself or his family, as a leadership tool is better suited to an action thriller than the Oval Office.